Tyranny setting

Tyranny features a new and original setting. The world of Terratus is unique in many ways.

People
Literacy is rare in the north. It is uncommon in the Tiers, but the nobility of the Younger Realms have taught literacy to the firstborn noble for centuries. Now, many of these disenfranchised nobles have fallen in with the uprising, and they rely on written messages - knowing most of Kyros' forces will be unable to decipher the contents.

Magic
While every guild or school of magic will ascribe different names to the theory, all mages inevitably stumble upon an inescapable fact - only the Archons can will magic into being, everyone else can only cast magic by invoking the sigil of an Archon that has come before. None knows how the Archons do their magic (it seems to be different with each Archon), but theory suggests that once an Archon starts to invoke their powers, anyone else who comes after that Archon could (with the proper knowledge) tap into that power with the proper sigil and know-how.

This observed law has given rise to a common question from young students: could one guess at a sigil of an Archon not yet born (or not remembered by history, or simply unknown to the caster) and successfully cast a spell? Experienced mystics would tell you this is impossible, for they know that it's not enough to just mimic the gestures of a sigil - one must have willful, conscious knowledge of the Archon and the intended power being channeled.

Universal

 * The Blue Flag is a symbol of diplomacy and truce recognized across most of the known world - and it is a custom the Tiersmen hold dear. To harm another person under the auspices of a Blue Flag is a grave offense - in both the Tiers and in Kyros's Empire, the customary punishment is death.

The Tiers

 * The Five Wives is the name for both the historic landfall of seafaring human settlers on the Tiers, as well as the name for the archipelago where the first (now largely abandoned) settlements were founded. In centuries past, the historic event was known more properly as "The Five Wives and the Seven Husbands" for as the story goes, seven ships made landfall, and after two seasons of difficult living, the seven husbands got back on their boats and see what else was nearby; all eventually perished. Many suggest this is just a parable used to explain the gender roles of land ownership and admiralty in the Tiers, but the nobility take the origin story quite seriously, and nearly every noble house in the Tiers has a family mythology linking them back to these five fabled matriarchs.